Condoleezza Rice tees up winning image at Pebble Beach

The Field Poll’s Mark DiCamillo noticed an interesting tick while conducting his recent survey on possible U.S. Senate candidates — a spike in Condoleezza Rice’s positives during the Pebble Beach Pro-Am in which the former secretary of state played.

“She was on national TV quite a bit, looking friendly, confident and very relaxed playing with the big boys,” DiCamillo said. “I didn’t know that many voters watch the Golf Channel.”

Rice isn’t just a hit with the clubhouse crowd. The Field Poll found that across deep-blue California, Republican Rice topped the list of possible candidates — with 49 percent of those surveyed saying they were inclined to support her. Rice even edged out Democratic state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Oddly enough, given her association with the George W. Bush White House and the decision to go to war in Iraq, Rice was the choice of a third of Democrats surveyed and had a bigger pull among independents than Harris.

“It’s a pretty enviable position,” DiCamillo said — especially for someone who has never held elective office and given no sign she’s going to run for the Senate next year.

Presidio payback: Talk about star wars.

More than two dozen of the Bay Area’s biggest names, including Steve Jobs’ widow and Joe Montana, are asking the Presidio Trust to turn over volumes of internal documents dealing with its decision to reject George Lucas’ bid to build a $700 million cultural arts museum near Crissy Field.

“There should be total transparency, which unfortunately hasn’t happened,’’ said attorney Joe Cotchett, a major fundraiser for state Democrats, whose past legal battles include the fight with billionaire Vinod Khosla over public access to Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay.

After having his museum proposal rebuffed by the Presidio Trust board last February, Lucas took his plans to Chicago.

Now, Cotchett has shot off a wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act request to the Presidio on behalf of the 28 Bay Area luminaries, many of them tech heavyweights — including Laurene Powell Jobs, Ron Conway, Sean Parker, Marissa Mayer, Steve Chen, Biz Stone, John Lasseter and Reid Hoffman. The list also includes both Joe and Jennifer Montana and MC Hammer.

These are the same folks who signed on in support of the Lucas project ahead of last year’s Presidio Trust vote. They were part of a subsequent campaign orchestrated by Mayor Ed Lee and Conway to try to persuade Lucas to move to a backup site at Piers 30-32.

Presidio critics suspect there is evidence in the pile of requested documents to prove that Lucas got a raw deal.

As for the Presidio’s reaction: “We get a lot of (Freedom of Information) requests,” said spokeswoman Dana Polk. “This is just par for the course.”

Raided: “If we don’t have significant progress within the next 30 days, I’d say one party or the other will call an end to it.” That’s how one source close to the Raiders stadium negotiations in Oakland characterizes the on-again, off-again talks.

The threat of the Raiders pulling up stakes and jointly building a stadium with the San Diego Chargers in the Los Angeles area has done little to ease officials’ concerns about the use of public money for a new Raiders home in Oakland.

Mayor Libby Schaaf has said she would be willing to use public money to help pay for “infrastructure” on and around a stadium site. That sounds negligible, but it might not be: Some officials say it could total $240 million to $300 million.

“My concern is that it could wind up being a shell game that will blow up the minute the public sees the details,” said one official on the Coliseum Authority, run jointly by the city and Alameda County.

All of this is being played out against the backdrop of the $20 million a year that city and county taxpayers are still shelling out from the 1990s deal that brought the Raiders back from Los Angeles.

“I lived through that once, and I don’t want to do it again,” said county Supervisor Nate Miley.

In other words, it’s still all about the money.

Church and state: In a letter to Democratic legislators upset about his call for parochial-school teachers to abide by Catholic teachings against same-sex unions, abortion and contraception, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone asked if the lawmakers would hire someone who openly opposed Democratic politics.

Or would they hire a Republican campaign manager, so long as the manager kept quiet about his or her views?

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, tells us he’s never hired a Republican to run a campaign, but that he once did hire a staffer who was gay, black, Catholic and Republican.

“But it didn’t work out,” Leno said. “She was too conflicted.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross

Whether writing about politics or personalities, Phil Matier and Andy Ross informed and entertained readers for more than two decades about the always fascinating Bay Area and beyond. Their blend of scoops, insights and investigative reporting was found every Sunday, Monday and Wednesday in the San Francisco Chronicle.